I am currently suffering a hard drive meltdown…
All my digital bits are surprisingly ad hoc and the drive that is failing currently stores ALL my digital music — about 160GB give or take a few GB 201GB. It’s a 250GB Ximeta Netdisk that I’ve been running in USB mode to a Mac Mini and the drive seems to be whirling up and down without a reliable connection. I’ve gotten it to connect to my computer a few times, though the finder has actually locked up while in the process…
I’ve got two other drives here, though only my 200GB LaCie Firewire can handle the content — once I kill or move what’s on it. That drive had a backup of an older iPhoto library (moved to my 120GB drive now) as well as a slew of archived DVDs which I am actually deleting as I own them and can re-rip. I’m hopeful that the Ximeta will stay connected long enough to transfer the content over, but I am not that hopeful unfortunately. All my purchased content is on my iPod so that’s cool and most of the collection is ripped from my CDs, which are sitting in my garage in “storage†while our basement is being worked on.
UPDATE — I’m screwed unless I can figure out a very creative plan. I’ve got the drive mounted, but there is way more stuff than I’ve got room to move at the moment. I think I’ve figured a consistent technique for getting the Ximeta back online, so I feel reasonably comfortable taking it offline tonight in order to let it stay cool, but I need a new hard drive in the am in the worst way.
Take some advice here kids — get a backup plan going…
I’ve been eyeing a nice Infrant NAS RAID which really would be saving my ass right now if I had just purchased it a month ago.
Technorati Tags: Backup, NAS, LaCie, Infrant, Ximeta, DVD, music
If your file system gets corrupted to the point where you are losing access to files, check out the PhotoRec tool which is part of TestDisk. The interface is a bit odd, but it works well and on many different operating systems.
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec
Hello Jonathan,
I have 2 actual hard drives in the computer. It has been listed as C drive and E drive and has been functioning quite contentedly for some time…. i have loads of music and photos and things on that drive…. or did? One day it just disappeared. I remember it coming back for awhile then it was gone for good. Right now i am having difficulties updating things, or downloading things (ie) redownloading my antivirus, because it is giving me error in drive E types of messages. The computer is one that has been reworked by a friend who dumped all my former computer..think it might have been a pentium into another one and added stuff…the current “house” for it is an hp pavillion…. sorry but thats about all i can offer on that except i will try to look at the mother board… only being the non computer friendly girl that i am… i am not sure which that is or where to find the number… sorry… i know that is not all that much help… oh yes, and i double checked the BIOS, that is what they said…
One of the tweaking programs was a “clone” one… would that have messed things up?
thanks again, looking forward to your help…
Bob –
Once the drive starts acting up you need to get a backup plan in action. I’d suggest getting some external drives ready to backup and then once you’ve got a solid copy, wiping your internal space and trying to start fresh with either a clean format or actually just a new drive or two back inside your computer.
I got rid of my failing drive and replaced it with a RAID so I am redundant.